The poem Eldorado was written by Edgar Allan Poe on April 21, 1849. Eldorado was a GoldenCity’ to the Spanish Conquistadors that they never found. In the poem the knight is looking for this special thing, and he travels all his life to find it. The knight is very sad and never finds what he is looking for. Later in the poem he starts to die (it’s actually later in his life).
The knight finds a vision and asks it why he can not find what he is looking for. The vision tells him where it is and that it could be unreachable if he did not continue looking for it. The vision encourages the knight not to give up and to always try really hard to achieve your goals. I chose this poem because it sounded cool. Once I analyzed it I really liked the meaning it gave:to never give up and to always try until you succeed.
This poem uses many of the poetic terms. The sequence AABCCB makes up the rhyme scheme. The author’s tone is a feeling of frustration and inadequacy in not finding his ?gold’. The imagery is given in dark and light.
?In sunshine and in shadow’ which probably mean life and death is a metaphor. Eldorado which is the something special or gold is also a metaphor. The last line in every stanza are similar and make up the refrain. Personification is represented with the ghost (shadow) giving the knight advice inhow to find his ?gold’. The mood that the reader has is a supernatural feeling.
It is also mythical because Eldorado was a mythical place. Similes are not used in this poem.
POETIC TERMS
- RHYME SCHEME – A regular pattern of rhyming words in a poem.
- TONE – The writer’s attitude toward his or her subject, characters, or audience.
- IMAGERY – Is the descriptive or figurative language used in literature to create word pictures for thereader.
- METAPHOR – A figure of speech in which one thing is spoken of as thogh it were something else.
- SIMILE – A figure of speech that makes a direct comparison between two subjects using either like or as.
- REFRAIN – A repeated line ora group of lines in a poem or a song.
- PERSONIFICATION – A figure of speech in which a nonhuman subject is given human characteristics.
- STANZA – A group of lines in a poem.
- MOOD – Atmosphere, is the feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage.
